Canadian Companies Must Cut Ties with ICE, Say Protesters

Robert H. had never gone to a political protest before. But then he saw a post on Instagram about a protest that was being planned to push back against a B.C. company’s plan to sell a warehouse in Virginia to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, for use as an immigrant detention centre.

“The stuff coming out of the U.S. right now, it’s disgusting, it’s heartbreaking,” he said. “And if you have any kind of empathy as a person, it would shatter you to see the stuff going on.”

Vancouver residents gathered at two protests Friday, both sparked by revelations that local companies were doing business with ICE.

Outside the offices of social media company Hootsuite, about 100 people gathered to call out the company for taking part in a US$1-million contract with American contracting firm Seneca Strategic Partners LLC to procure services from Hootsuite.

Several of the protesters were former Hootsuite employees.* Travis Fishbein, who worked at the company from 2012 to 2018, said he became increasingly uncomfortable with its role in social media as the alt right came to prominence in U.S. politics.

“A lot of these tech companies, Hootsuite included, are willing to bypass human rights for a lot of money,” Fishbein said.

“I spent six years of my blood, sweat and tears trying to get Hootsuite to where it is, but there’s a level of pissed off and a level of betrayal, but also a level of ‘Of course it had to be this way.’”

Hootsuite’s CEO, Irina Novoselsky, has said the company will not end its contract with ICE.

Just a few hours later, protesters also gathered outside the downtown Vancouver offices of the Jim Pattison Group, the headquarters of B.C. billionaire Jim Pattison’s business empire.

But that event turned into a celebration. Just hours before the protest was due to start, the company announced that its real estate arm, Jim Pattison Developments, would halt the sale of a warehouse it owns in Virginia.

While the company said it was not aware the end buyer was ICE, local news reporting from Virginia revealed last week that the Department of Homeland Security intended to use the property as a “processing facility” for immigrants.

The gathering turned sombre at times as participants spoke of their deep grief and anger at seeing news of the deaths of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, and Renee Good, a mother and poet, both shot by federal agents during ICE operations in Minneapolis. Pretti and Good had been participating in efforts to resist ICE’s aggressive operation to arrest immigrants in Minneapolis this winter.

The leader of the BC Green Party, Emily Lowan, spearheaded calls for a boycott of Pattison-owned businesses, including Save-On-Foods and other grocery stores.

Lowan said the company’s decision to pull out of the property sale was a victory. But she said the situation shows the need for higher taxes on billionaires and for legislation to break up the industry consolidation that gives large businesses too much power over the lives of Canadian workers and consumers.

“What this has blown open is that we need so much more transparency from corporations that have investments in the U.S.,” Lowan told The Tyee. “We also need to look at our monopoly laws in B.C. and in Canada, because a major response to the boycott action is that so many people are in a community that only has a Pattison-owned grocery store.”

Hootsuite and Jim Pattison Developments are not the only Canadian companies doing business with ICE. GardaWorld, a Quebec-based security firm, has provided security guards to staff “Alligator Alcatraz,” a detention centre in Florida that experts have said meets the definition of a concentration camp.

Roshel, an armoured-car maker, recently signed a contract to deliver vehicles to ICE.

In addition to those companies, independent journalist Rachel Gilmore has catalogued five other Canadian companies that are also doing business with ICE. Those companies include JSI, a tech company that provides wiretapping tools to ICE.

Heather McPherson, an NDP MP who is currently running for the leadership of the party, is calling for stronger action from the federal government. McPherson says Canada should deny all export permits for military goods (such as armoured cars), cancel federal subsidies to companies contracting with ICE and “explore all legal mechanisms including sanctions under the Special Measures Act to prohibit such contracts.”

In her letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney, McPherson said the Canadian government continues to pay GardaWorld for security services, despite its involvement in staffing ICE detention centres where human rights abuses have been documented.

She also called out the federal government for “awarding $1 million in public money” to JSI this year.

McPherson said she had terminated the GardaWorld contract for security at her own office and had hired a different company.

* Disclosure: A family member of the author of this story was a Hootsuite employee from 2012 to 2020.

With files from Isaac Phan Nay.